A Seme in the Integument: Allegory in the 'House of Fame'

Published: J. Stephen Russell, ed. Allegoresis: The Craft of Allegory in Medieval Literature (New York and London: Garland, 1988, for 1987), pp. 171-85.

Description: Examines the crux in lines 1907-15 as a "seam" in Chaucer's fabrication that reveals his understanding of allegory and its appropriateness for his vision. The "disconversant dialogue" represented in these lines is "a convention of personification allegory and other texts that operate on multiple levels," as in "Everymay" and the Bible. His "sense of allegory's limitations...causes Chaucer to reject the allegorist's mantle of 'grete auctoritee'."; Paradoxically, in the medieval Emmaus Pilgrim tradition, Christ, who according to the Gospels forbade pilgrim garb, assumes pilgrim disguise and tells fables ("dum fabularentur" (Vulgate)). In the common medieval understanding of this tradition, Chaucer in CT presents a "true sermon in the pilgrim disguise of lying fables," with confidence in his audience's reception and participaiton in the redemptive design.

Alternative Title: Allegoresis: The Craft of Allegory in Medieval Literature.